Baseball Card Market Report for December 5-11, 2024 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Checking in on 1986 Topps baseball cards

Dec 13, 2024

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“Old” School Market Report

Take a look at the list of the most expensive baseball cards sold on eBay last week (bottom of post), and you might notice something out of the ordinary (for this space, at least).

Did you see it?

Looked at one way, “it” is actually the lack of something, or at least the relative lack of something — new cards.

Just one Ohtani, a few Skenes, and a handful of other 2020s cards made the cut. Meanwhile, there are two Jackie Robinson cards from the 1940s, and a nice slate of cardboard from the 1950s through the 1990s.

Heck, there are even a pair of Hall of Fame T206 cards for your perusal. Definitely a list with plenty of vintage flair!

Now, for a bit more vintage flair, even if that vintage is a bit more recent…

Checking in on 1986 Topps Baseball Cards

Last week over on our YouTube channel, we took a look that the most expensive 1986 baseball cards sold on eBay recently:

The 1986 Topps set in particular has a sort of checkered history.

The hobby wasn’t all that excited about the design early on, not with Fleer and Donruss upping their games in the middle of the 1980s.

And 1986 Topps featured the same old mushy brown cardstock and a pretty lackluster group of rookie cards. Vince Coleman and Ozzie Guillen were tough sells as the headliners on the heels of a 1985 set that featured RCs of Roger Clemens, Eric Davis, Dwight Gooden, Mark McGwire, and seemingly hundreds of others.

These days, though, these seem to tickle the nostalgia bone for a lot of collectors, and there are lots of Hall of Famers included in the checklist, even if the rookie-card lineup is still blah.

The upshot is that the set did OK but not great during the most recent boom, seeing some relatively modest price increases.

But how has the set done since then? The last year has seen a fairly flat older-card market in general, so this not-so-popular issue might give us some insights into broader trends.

Well, here is a rundown of how the most 1986 Topps baseball cards have done over the last year in PSA 9 condition, based on actual selling prices (per the PSA Auction Prices Realized tool):

1986 Topps Nolan Ryan (#100) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $70
2024 Value: $75
Profit/loss: $5
% change: 7

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1986 Topps Don Mattingly (#180) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $30
2024 Value: $25
Profit/loss: -$5
% change: -17

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1986 Topps Pete Rose (#1) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $35
2024 Value: $50
Profit/loss: $15
% change: 43

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1986 Topps Cal Ripken, Jr. (#340) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $20
2024 Value: $17
Profit/loss: -$3
% change: -15

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1986 Topps Roger Clemens (#661) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $10
2024 Value: $13
Profit/loss: $3
% change: 30

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1986 Topps Rickey Henderson (#500) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $40
2024 Value: $50
Profit/loss: $10
% change: 25

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1986 Topps Kirby Puckett (#329) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $20
2024 Value: $20
Profit/loss: $0
% change: 0

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1986 Topps Pete Rose (Manager) (#741) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $45
2024 Value: $25
Profit/loss: -$20
% change: -44

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1986 Topps Ryne Sandberg (#690) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $50
2024 Value: $50
Profit/loss: $0
% change: 0

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1986 Topps Mike Schmidt (#200) - PSA 9

2023 Value: $27
2024 Value: $25
Profit/loss: -$2
% change: -7

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—

Overall, as a group, these ten cards saw about a 1% increase since the fall of 2023, with four going up, four going down, and two flat. That’s pretty much a picture of stagnant market (for this set, at least), which isn’t too surprising for a mostly uninspiring issue with no big player news to move it forward in the last 12 months.

A possible exception is Rose, who passed away at the end of September, and whose cards did see a surge in activity and prices in the weeks that followed. Even with Pete, though, his two cards on this list ended up pretty much a wash since one is up, and one is down.

As we saw with 1989 Bowman last week, we can take a few lessons from this little exercise…

One, the pandemic boom is likely completely done, and it might have been done for a good while now. No big news there.

Two, “old” cards aren’t necessarily compelling buys for collectors or destined to go up in value year after year just because they’re old.

Three, this is all cardboard we’re dealing with here, and there comes a point in the life of nearly every hunk of expensive cardboard when the dollar-brokers realize…hey, this is just cardboard.

Now for some cards that are currently running in economic circles well above their only-cardboard reality…

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for November December 5-11, 2024

(Quick note — this list contains affiliate links to the original eBay listings.)

If you want to see updated 30-day market toppers anytime, we have a couple of resources over on WaxPackGods.com:

Most expensive baseball cards sold in the last 30 days
Most expensive football cards sold in the last 30 days
Most expensive basketball cards sold in the last 30 days
Most expensive hockey cards sold in the last 30 days

Now, on with the show …

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